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March 9 - March 13, 2024
As a white, slim person, the way my body intersects with society is privileged to an extent that I will never be able to fully comprehend. I have never experienced the realities of living in a marginalized body, nor one that the general population deems unworthy. While I have recognized elements of the queer identity in the process of my own self-discovery, in many contexts I get to choose whether I let the world judge me by my differences.
It’s more the idea that bodies are bodies, you are where you are, and that’s okay. You love yourself as a person, not just as a body.
that body neutrality is the practice of steering away from self-hate without the pressure of having to love our body. Within neutrality there will be some days when we love our body and some days when we hate it, and many days in between. But no matter how we feel about what is staring back at us in the mirror, we work to respect our body.
Body neutrality is not saying that you shouldn’t have any feelings about your body or that you should never think about your body, or that your body doesn’t matter. But it is saying that your body does not dictate your worth. You are more than a body, and your value as a person extends far beyond your physical presence.
When you look at how our society currently talks about bodies, you can clearly see two poles between which the pendulum swings: body shame and toxic positivity.
Diet culture is like hundreds of contradictory voices screaming at you at once; at its extreme, eating and moving become so loaded with anxiety and expectation that we forget how to do either with ease. And what have humans been doing intuitively since the beginning of time? Eating and moving. We were born with these instincts.
Or maybe because the sacrifices you’ve made to keep your body static prevent you from finding joy in life. Or perhaps because others simply don’t care in the way you think they do.
I was so tired of apologizing on behalf of my body as opposed to apologizing to my body for everything I had put it through.”
Food can be therapeutic. It can be a way to connect with other people and enjoy and experience life. How many of those experiences are we willing to lose in order to be thin?
